Lawsuit accuses Dollar General execs of lying to stockholders: What to know
MONEY

Trump presidency could be good business for songwriters

Nate Rau
USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennessee

Nashville Songwriters Association International Executive Director Bart Herbison offers his thoughts about how President Donald Trump's administration could help songwriters with a major qualifier.

Bart Herbison is executive director of Nashville Songwriters Association International.

"These are the kinds of stories that can get you in trouble. NSAI, our party is not Democrat. It's not Republican. It's not independent,” Herbison said, adding that the songwriters’ party is the We Don’t Get Paid Enough Because We’re Under Stupid Rules Songwriter Party.

“I want to be careful because I’ve never seen a time more polarizing.”

Herbison said that NSAI’s job is to “fight the songwriter fight” regardless of which party controls the federal government.

“Having said that, I will say the past several administrations, we’ve been very frustrated,” Herbison said, “because either A. the administration just didn’t dial in on our issues. They were absent. Or, B., in the case of the last administration, the default position seemed to be ‘Free. What does Google want? And let’s make (creative content) free.’”

ASCAP, BMI dig in for battle with DOJ over licensing rules

And yet, Herbison said there is real reason for hope that meaningful copyright reform to help songwriters could come under the Trump administration. Songwriters say they’re working under antiquated laws that do not reflect the progressive age of digital music commerce. In short, songwriters want to get paid better when their songs are played on a digital music service.

But they say government regulations, particularly the federal consent decrees that govern performance rights organizations ASCAP and BMI, ruin their chances at negotiating better deals with the likes of Spotify, Pandora and SiriusXM.

That’s why when Trump says he wants to repeal two federal regulations for every one that’s passed, it is music to the ears of songwriters.

"We would hope, and it's certainly something that President Trump has said, that less regulation would be a philosophy," Herbison said. "There's nobody overregulated in such a ridiculous way than the American songwriter."

There’s other reasons for hope too. Proponents of music copyright reform have complained that President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice had too many top attorneys with ties to Silicon Valley, particularly Google, which opposes drastic revisions to the consent decrees and is skeptical of other copyright reforms that songwriters champion. Under Obama, the DOJ became embroiled in contentious litigation over its decision to impose 100 percent licensing, which songwriters and publishers say would damage creative collaboration and complicate the administration of their licenses.

Under 100 percent, publishers would have full licensing rights to a song, even if they only owned a small fraction of the copyright. ASCAP, BMI and Nashville publishers say this would create logistical problems for administering licenses and discourage the common practice of songwriters represented by different performance rights organizations from working together.

Last year, NSAI President Lee Thomas Miller, one of the city’s top songwriters, said 100 percent licensing would “put the final nail” in the coffin of the songwriting profession. After an initial win where a federal judge struck down enforcement of 100 percent licensing, the DOJ under Obama appealed the decision.

Although the new DOJ leadership is not fully in place, early indications are that Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions will not lean so heavily on Silicon Valley to staff the anti-trust division.

“It really started in the 1980s when the internet industry got the message out that freedom of speech, and free dissemination of information meant that the content’s free,” Herbison said. “And we’ve fought that battle for 30 years.

“So past administrations either took that view, or they were agnostic.”

Herbison also points that two of songwriters’ most ardent champions in Congress — U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, R-Georgia, and U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-New York — now have leadership roles in the House. Herbison said Tennessee's U.S. Senators, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, have joined U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn and Collins as songwriters' "message carriers" to the new administration.

U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Virginia, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, has already signaled that a copyright reform proposal could be introduced in the coming months.

“So we have a new administration and new Congress, so what does that mean?” Herbison said. “Well, if I’m fair and accurate, the jury’s still out. But there are a number of positions in the executive branch and Congress – and I’m not sure the executive branch has ever been more important to the working songwriter, starting with the Attorney General and a few appointments he’ll have to make.

“We all know the debacle of 100 percent licensing. Well everyone of those people in the Department of Justice, from the Attorney General down to the Antitrust (division director) Renatta Hesse, who was a former Google lawyer, are gone. It remains to be seen what (new Attorney General Jeff) Sessions or his appointees will do.”

Herbison said NSAI regularly visited Sessions’ office when he was a U.S. Senator.

“I can tell you that he and his staff knew our issues and he knew songwriters. It’s Alabama and a lot of our members were from his state,” Herbison said, adding that NSAI will be closely watching Session's pick to lead the antitrust division. "Our hope is we get appointees that understand copyrights and intellectual property. It's difficult to start from ground zero with somebody who doesn't understand how these industries work."

Trump, whose views on immigration and health care have sparked controversy, could be a boon to Nashville’s professional songwriters who have been desperate for their industry to be deregulated and opened up to the free market.

“Philosophically there seems to be some promise," Herbison said. "But where do we fit into a lot of priorities that this administration and Congress has?"

Reach Nate Rau at nrau@tennessean.com and 615-259-8094. Follow him on Twitter @tnnaterau.